


The Comet

by bonbel



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-22 02:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8269105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonbel/pseuds/bonbel
Summary: Marceline, Princess Bubblegum, Finn, and Flame Princess discuss the apocalypse through a series of letters.





	1. Problems

Bonnibel,

I guess it’s a little strange for me to be writing to you like this. Whenever I went away, you were always the romantic, sending me three page letters filled with questions. It was all I could do to answer all of them, and at that point you’d come up with more. So I guess this is my first time really initiating a conversation like this. Maybe you’re just not ready to write me after the fight that we had.

The two of us ending up together was quite a strange twist, don’t you think? You were my best friend in the world, but I put all of that on the line when I fell in love with you. Glob, I make it sound like I had a choice. Love can be so twisted and bizarre sometimes, you know? Like how you can hate the starchy taste of bubblegum for nearly 800 years and still find yourself feeling drunk on it, carrying around an empty wrapper everywhere you go so you can always remind yourself of the smell of happiness.

So maybe now you understand why you were the one who had to kiss me first. I'm not brave, Bonnie. I've been brave in the past, and it's never gotten me anywhere. I was brave when I tried to kill the vampire king, but I still failed. I was brave when I stood up to my father, but I only shattered our relationship. And I was brave when I let Simon leave me all alone to face the cruelties of the world, and now the both of us are too messed up to lead the lives we want to. Or at least, that's what I thought, until I met you.

You're not brave Bonnie, but you're not a coward either. You're not an optimist or a pessimist, you're not selfish or noble, you're not good or evil. You're a scientist. You analyze the situation, you figure out what you want, and you go out into the world and find it. You probably knew I was in love with you before I even did, and when you realized you felt the same way, you wrapped your hand around my waist and kissed me. And I'll be totally honest with you Bonnibel, it was... awkward.

You kissed me the way I would expect a princess to kiss. You didn't open your mouth, you barely tilted your head, and you pulled away after only a few moments. Considering the weight of such an action, it felt oddly formal. And then you turned around and walked away without so much as a glance. It felt surreal, but not necessarily in a good way. For the next couple of days, I wasn't sure if it had really happened or not. But when I met you for lunch, you wore the cutest blue cocktail dress and curled your hair into ringlets as if you had primped up just to see me. And I took your hand, and told you I loved you. And you smiled at me and said you loved me too. And for a moment, it felt like my life was finally coming together.

But things changed. You had work to do, and I became less of a priority. I'm not blaming you, of course... I know that you're obligated to protect your kingdom above all else. But for the first time in nearly a thousand years, I had felt like someone finally cared about me above all else, and when I realized I was wrong, it hurt. A lot. I started spending most of my time inside, taking long showers and writing songs about you that I knew I could never share. And that's when we started to have problems.

We fought. We yelled. We never really made up, just pretended to forget. One day, I made you a gift, to try and show you how much you meant to me. You tossed it into your closet and promptly forgot about it. It wasn't until years later that I realized you still wore it every night.

"I can't keep doing this, Marceline." I still remember those words. "Can't keep doing what?" I was so naive. "I can't keep being in love with you." I didn't respond. "It's just so hard, and it hurts so much. I wish we could just be normal, but we have all these problems." And that was where you miscalculated. Yes, you heard me right Bonnibel, you miscalculated. In fact, you weren't even using the right equation. It's something that's taken me years to realize, but it's normal to have problems. It's normal to lie, it's normal to be uncertain, it's normal to realize you've made a mistake. I made a mistake by leaving that day, instead of telling you how I really feel. Mistakes are a part of life, regrets are a part of life, problems are a part of life. And in the end, who would we be without them?

The two of us first met when the world was ending. And now, the comet is coming. Are things just repeating, over and over again? If the world really is ending, it makes me wonder. Could we still love each other if we knew what was at stake? If the world is ending and we have so little time left, will we choose to be together? Will we even care?

Everything is ending, Bonnibel. Am I still your problem?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this IMMENSELY on february 2nd 2017 because i really wasn't happy with it... sorry for any confusion!
> 
> The next chapter is going to be a letter from Bubblegum to Finn.


	2. Responsibility

Dearest Finn,

Remember when I told you that responsibility demands sacrifice? Well, this world has not sacrificed quite enough. We can not protect ourselves from what is coming next. Now, it is time for me to take responsibility, and tell you who you really are to me.

The truth is Finn, I have heard you speak to others about me as though we used to be an item. We were not. I have always considered you one of my dearest friends, but nothing more. Those moments in which I showed fleeting attraction were just times of confusion and frustration. And after all this time, the guilt is wearing me down, and making it hard to go on. This will not be easy to hear, Finn. I did care about you, of course, but I also never really viewed you as a real person. You were a hero, a symbol of hope, an amalgam of all the men throughout my life who gave me pride in my role as a princess. But you were even more than that. You were a human.

You must have noticed my behavior around you has always been odd. I seemed to show affection at just the moments necessary to keep you thinking you had a shot with me. I did not just let you disclose your thoughts and secrets with me, I encouraged it. If you could see the back-most room of my library, you would find book after book of complex journal entries written by me, all about you. Of course, I always kept the room locked. I could not let you know what you really meant to me, what I perceived your value as. A test subject.

It sounds despicable, and it was. I will not even try to deny it. But lives are cheap to me, Finn. I built this kingdom from scratch, and made every single citizen with my own hands. After you spend so many years building living bodies out of debris, creating souls from enzymes and biomass, life just does not seem like such a valuable thing anymore. But you are different. You will die one day, and you will not come back. I can not clone you, I can not make you live forever. So time was of the essence. I needed my data.

I studied the mechanics of human sexuality on my own for years. You loved me, and that was enough to tell me what I needed to know. All my research pointed to the likelihood that humans were dedicated and persistent creatures who could not suppress or recover from their emotions. As much as it pains me to admit this… I was wrong. Phoebe came along, and proved that I was wrong.

I did not tell Jake the full story of Phoebe’s instability. If she had kissed someone like Marceline or I, nothing particularly destructive would have happened. But she kissed you, a human. And so I reached the pinnacle of my research.

Finn, you feel more than anyone else on this Earth. Pain, anger, and loss make up a fundamental part of your mind. You grew up surrounded by people like me, people who are empty in comparison to you. You hurt so much, but you go on. That was when I realized that I loved you. That was when I recognized my mistakes for what they were.

I am no stranger to regret. But nothing else has ever scarred me so much as the thought that might have broken you. These days, you act differently, more cold, more controlled. You think that it is a sign of maturity, but it is a disease. I did this to you, all for the sake of science. All out of responsibility.

This is my regret, Finn. Do you understand? I have infected your innocence and damaged you beyond repair. Trauma never leaves, not even for people like me. If you were made of candy, I could just cut open your head and subtract the memories that did this to you. But humans are as fragile as glass, and even harder to repair. Responsibility demands sacrifice, and I have told myself every day of my life that it is my responsibility to solve the puzzles of the world, no matter the sacrifice. You were more than a sacrifice. You were a flawed experiment, and I have walked away with the wrong results. You deserved so much better.

I have a secret to tell you. Something that I have never told anyone. I am a clone. You caught on to the possibility after the incident with James. That was the day I stole a lock of your hair and tried to replicate you for the first time. The organism I created had no control, no personality, no memories. No humanoid clone could ever encapsulate your identity. For artificial lifeforms like me, things are different. I could die a thousand deaths and come back just the same. And I have. So why did I not tell you, if I really have not changed? Well, as I continued my life, I found flaws in myself. Things I wanted gone. And I wrote them down in blueprints, so that every time I got rebuilt, I would be just a little bit closer to perfection. I replaced my empathy with shameless curiosity, my anger with manipulation and tact, and my despair with boundless determination. As the years went on, I became more and more like my idealized self, until I realized that I was building a robot. All I wanted was to do nothing but work. Sleep was a distraction, meals were a distraction, friends were a distraction, love was a distraction. But when I heard about the comet, I poured over my notes, and thought about everything I had done in my 827 years of life. And with the last drop of compassion I had left, I went into the dungeons of my castle and found my original body. She was a hybrid, mostly gum, but part human. I gathered all the biomass I could and cloned myself one last time. And when I opened my eyes, I found that I could cry again.

I remembered that you were my best friend. I remembered that I was in love with the woman I had been pushing away for years. I remembered that when I first built this kingdom, I made every citizen unique, and I promised them that I would protect them with my life. I remembered my pain, and I remembered being human.

My ancestor, the first known sugar based organism, was destroyed by a meteorite almost exactly one hundred million years ago. Now a new comet, even bigger than the last, travels on the same course, getting closer and closer by the second. It will destroy us all. You, the last human, were the only hope I had. But I do not know if you are human anymore. Being human is more than biology, I can see that now. If you can not rebuild yourself to the complex person you once were, we will perish. And it will be all my fault.

Everything is ending, Finn. Is it time to take responsibility for my sins?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was fun to write... I'm not sure which character I'm going to do next!


	3. Freedom

Hi, Flame Princess. It's been a while.

The last time I wrote you something, it was that poem on the day we kissed, remember? That was one of the best days of my life. Bubblegum said we almost died, but all I cared about was how light I felt at the realization that I was in love. Love is... weird. Really, really weird. But in a good way.

I haven't been able to contact Marceline or Bubblegum for over a week. I got a weird letter from Peebs the other day, and when I tried to call her about it, Peppermint said she had been locked in her tower for days. Marcy isn't home, or if she is, she's not willing to talk. Jake visited Lady to see if she knew what was going on, and came up empty. I get the sense that people are preparing for something, and I guess I'd just feel really cruddy if I didn't tell you how I feel.

You were the first person I was ever in love with. I know, I know, I had a thing for Bubblegum before I met you. But it wasn't real. I didn't really know who she was or what I was to her, I was just in love with the idea of having someone who cared about me. But at this point, I don't even know if she ever cared about me. Things have been... rocky between us, to say the least. Sometimes in my dreams, I still have that scar on my cheek from when she cut me with a pair of safety scissors. The real mark faded long ago, but emotionally, it stuck. Physical scars only mean so much, I guess. When we were together, you practically burned the flesh clean off my body, but it never even bothered me. It was worth it, to be so deeply in love. And looking back, I still think it was worth it. Despite everything, it was worth it.

Do you remember when we first met? I cried so hard that my face was blotchy for days. But back then, you didn't even know what crying was. It's not that you had never felt sadness, it's that you didn't know how to express it. You only had anger. It was terrifying, but I thought there was something so beautiful in how dangerous you seemed. That was my mistake, I think. I let myself think you were dangerous, and when we started dating, all I thought about was how you could hurt me. I never considered that I could hurt you so much worse. Since we met, you've shown me every other side of you, your excitement, your fear, your loneliness. And with each new thing I learned about you, you looked more and more beautiful. But it wasn't until too late that I realized just how fragile you were.

I guess... in that way, we're alike, you and I. You're not a human, but inside, you're just as breakable. I've always hated being human. I've hated having skin and blood and fragile limbs that won't ever grow back if I lose them. I've hated watching my body grow and change and knowing that someday I will die, and all of my friends will just keep leading their lives without me. Everything is so much more painful than it should be, and sometimes it's just too much for me to deal with. But it wasn't until just now that I realized the virtue of pain. Pain has made me who I am today. Life is painful, love is painful, but pain isn't the worst thing in this world. I'd rather hurt all over than let myself become empty inside. I'd rather stay in love with you forever than never love anyone again.

And it's because I love you, Flame Princess, that I want to make you happy. And I know you will only be truly happy in a world where you can be free. Free of liars, and tricksters, and people who want to control you. Free of people like Bubblegum. Free of people like your father. Free of people like me. And that's why I know that we will never get back together. I love you so much that I finally understand, in order to keep you safe, I can't be a part of your life. At least, not as a boyfriend.

I've always thought of my life as one of total freedom. I went on adventures, I learned new things, I did what I wanted. But now I see that I'm just as trapped as you once were. I let the people I thought cared about me lie to me and belittle me and take advantage of me. I let my own moral code dictate the way I led my life, until everything crumbled to bits and I found myself becoming the same as the villains I so despised. I'm trapped in my own lantern, one that's made up of all my mistakes and insecurities and flaws. I don't know how to escape it.

I don't know if you've heard, but there's a comet coming. It could destroy all of Ooo. But I'm going to try and stop it. For you, for Jake, for all the people I love. I might fail. I might die. We all might die. But I can't just give up.

Everything is ending, Phoebe. Will I find freedom from my regrets?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DAMN i forgot that i even had an ao3 for like 4 months but... i'm back! yay~


End file.
